Peering at Faces in the Clouds original essay

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This is a review essay on Stewart Elliot Guthrie's book, "Faces in the Clouds." This impressive book deals with the uncanny ability of human minds to seek for and find meaningful patterns everywhere, including places they really don't exist. For instance, when we do see faces in the clouds. Guthrie (and I) believe that this facility with pattern led (in very ancient times) to the development of human religious belief.

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Peering at Faces in the Clouds original essay

Uploaded by

Description:

This is a review essay on Stewart Elliot Guthrie's book, "Faces in the Clouds." This impressive book deals with the uncanny ability of human minds to seek for and find meaningful patterns everywhere, including places they really don't exist. For instance, when we do see faces in the clouds. Guthrie (and I) believe that this facility with pattern led (in very ancient times) to the development of human religious belief.

Peering at Faces in the Clouds

[This article was originally published in Secular Nation September/October 1996,

pp. 2-5.]

Review of Stewart Elliott Guthrie: Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory

of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) $30.00.

What is religion and why does it pervade human thought and culture?Every human culture that we know of--past and present--constructsintricate systems of natural and moral order, endowing them withreligious significance. In Faces in the Clouds, Stewart Elliott Guthrie,Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University, considers anddismisses the traditional philosophical explanations for the tenacity anddurability of religion in the human imagination, and settles on a much more satisfyingone: that the thought processes which lead to religion are the very same ones whichenabled humans to survive and flourish on an often hostile planet.

Guthrie asserts that religion is systematic anthropomorphism, that is, the attribution ofhuman characteristics to nonhuman things and events, implying the existence of thoughtand intentionality in our surroundings, and implying further the existence of a directingintelligence behind it all. In short, religious impulses grow out of our deepest felt need fora relationship with an unseen Other.

If we would seek to understand the origins of religion, the first question we must ask isobvious: What do believers believe in? Something that transcends the limitations and therules of physical evidence; something comprehending, intelligent, perhaps even caring;something that gives order and meaning to the universe and to human life. The believerbelieves in unity, infinity, dependence, love, and awe--all aspects woven together into aBeing which reaches down in response to their sincere belief and enfolds all that is.

Clearly, Guthrie finds the theories on religion espoused by nonbelievers to be wanting.

Saying, as atheists do, that "...gods do not exist and that religion is a human creation..."may be true, but it merely begs the question of why humans bother to believe in the firstplace. One would suppose that such fantasies would have seriously handicapped ourancestors in their struggle to survive in a world inhabited by predators and enemies whichwere all too real. And yet these fantasies managed to grow and thrive in the minds ofthose very same humans everywhere in the world throughout the ages.

Guthrie asserts that humanistic theories on the existence of religion are in disarray. Theyvariously maintain that religions alleviate unpleasant emotions, when in fact manyreligions introduced and re-enforced unpleasant emotions; they depict religion as merescaffolding for a given social order, when religious thought would often pull the ricketystructure of an ancien regime down upon everyone's head; and they view religion as anattempt to interpret and influence the world. The last point is well taken. Religion doesindeed do that, but on the whole, not consciously or deliberately in the manner indicatedby the theorists.

The two points on emotionalism and social re-enforcement tell us nothing whatsoeverabout how religion may have begun. They merely hypothesize on how certain religionsmaintain their hold upon the human imagination, presumably thousands of years afterthey took root. In fact, many human cultures in history have independently created andrecreated the major existent forms of religion over the ages.

But a truly universal theory of religion must go further than that. It must also delineateand analyze religious characteristics held in common. "General theories of religion mustsay not only how people came to subscribe to a religion but also what it is that allreligions share. Because religious beliefs and practices are diverse, descriptions of whatthey have in common must be abstract."

Guthrie wants to know (and so do I) what profound human need drives this apparentobsession. There is something else going on here besides neat fakery foisted on thegullible by the self-seeking and by those who have succeeded in gulling themselves. Whyshould people be so consistently credulous on such matters? Calling religion "the opiateof the masses," as Marx did means nothing in of itself, but does lead directly to Guthrie'snext question: why must religion be an opiate?

Before he leads us to the answer to that question, Guthrie analyzes the three differenttheories of religion described earlier. We could call these the emotional, the social, andthe practical visions of religion. His first group of theorists generally agree that religion isan attempt to allay fears. Spinoza, Hume, Marx, and Freud advanced varying versions ofthis hypothesis. Religions have devised rituals to ward off sickness, death and naturalcataclysms. Freud's "gods" have a three-fold task. "...they must exorcise the terror ofnature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death,and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations of civilized life."

Religion then enables its adherents to escape the cruelties of the real world and enterfantasy land. It is wish-fulfillment. There is, however, one small problem with thisexplanation. It isn't true for most religions. "If religion's appeal is in its hope, though,believers must think deities are protective, souls are immortal, injustices will be righted,or some such comforting thought.... However, there are religions without such beliefs, orwith others that seem less comforting. Many have wrathful and capricious deities anddemons. Some have neither a universal moral order nor an afterlife. Others have only agloomy netherworld, or one or more hells." If this is wish-fulfillment, it is a masochisticone. This theory's Sunday school roster of religious characteristics seems hardly thecomprehensive and detailed listing that a robust universal theory requires.Guthrie's second group of theorists believe that the key to solving the riddle of religionlay within the social order. Here, religion is a means to social solidarity. The privatevirtues and public morality fostered by religious sentiment preserve and maintain thepublic good. Politicians praise religion for keeping citizens on the straight and narrow.Theocracies are the ultimate end of the institutionalization of this belief. In a theocracy,religious belief and social order are one. "Holding men in awe of the law and themagistrates" is the highest of religious duties.

Durkheim described religion as "encoded morality." It preserves social order which

develops through the ages of cultural evolution. It acts as a cultural ratchet, permitting thedevelopment of additional social order while forbidding backsliding. Religion makesconcrete to the people that hugely complex abstraction known as society. "The sum ofsocial relations is too manifold, abstract, and subtle to grasp directly, and the demandsmade of individuals by society too stringent for easy acquiescence. A society thereforemust be represented to its members by some emblem of its scope and authority, such as atotem. In this emblem...society worships itself."

We see here a striking example of circular thinking. It is highly misleading for any theoryof the origins of religion to stipulate that the existence of some sort of powerful god-likesocietal intelligence is required in order for that society's citizens to be able tocontemplate of the possible existence of gods. Arguing A is A because it leads to A gets usnowhere fast. Besides that, the facts the argument uses are clearly in error.Societies areneither organisms nor are they thinking beings. Societies are never organized perfectlyfor their own needs. Cultural evolution, like the biological version, can only work withmaterials at hand. Instead of envisioning the all-powerful leviathan of society as a beingfit to be worshipped, theorists must face the fact that societies grow and change as theywill, self-organizing as they increase in complexity, achieving order not by design but byopportunity.

We cannot credit the existence of social cohesion to religion. In large, complex societiessuch as ours, there are many religions, many allegiances. Loyalties clash. Here, religionand society differ sharply. Sometimes the strictures of a religion command adherents toattack their own society as the fount of wickedness. Deliberately fostering such religionsis hardly in any society's best interest.

The third group of theorists holds that religion is an attempt to interpret and influence theworld--a primitive version of science, if you will. "These theorists emphasize the task ofinterpretation faced by humans (as by other animals) in perceiving and acting in theworld. They see the world of experience as inchoate and our first necessity as makingsense of it. They make religion a particular interpretation of the world, an interpretationwhose conclusion (but not whose topics or even logic) differ from those of secularthought and action."

Humans explain new, unknown events by what is known. Why do lightning and thunderoccur? Because powerful humanlike beings are causing the disturbances. What are thestars? The campfires of the gods.Sir E.B. Tylor believed that ancient people envisioned the soul or spirit as a "thinunsubstantiated human image, in its nature a sort of vapor, film or shadow; the cause oflife in the individual it animates." This early form of vitalism led people to attributespirits to other people, to animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. These people filledtheir world with human thought and insight. Later, the spirits were magnified in powerimaginatively by their people until they became gods.

Hume believed that early peoples devised the concept of God from the apparent design ofthe world. Spencer thought early humans derived spirituality from cycles and recurrencesin nature. Weber insisted that the pursuit of meaning is a central human concern. Theseand others explained the existence and duration of religion as an ongoing humanendeavor to construct a plausible and rational model of existence, to describe andunderstand the universe as a meaningful and coherent place.

These rationalistic arguments give us an image of an unseen order which humans havesought out and attempted to describe and explain. If believers then harmonize themselveswith such an order in thought and action, they would achieve a sense of wholeness andholiness. Certainly, this explains what many religious people do. Theologians make theirliving building up and adding to such world views. But this concept of the unseen orderseems too dauntingly abstract to drive the actions and to direct the deepest thoughts ofmost people. We must look elsewhere to find a universal explanation for religious belief.

In any true religion, we find believers who make a commitment to their god, establishinga relationship of trust with a being they know exists. Instead of engaging in ruminationson deep philosophical abstractions, these people achieve faith. Faith is not belief in thetenets of the religion but is a profound commitment to a personal relationship with one'sgod. It is a social act. How did people develop the concept of the possibility of arelationship between human beings and a god? We are getting close to the real issue.

The object of religious belief (God) and how humans happened to create the concept ofthat object and crave a relationship with it (faith) are the phenomena to which a truetheory of religion must attend. To ignore Proudfoot's "intentional object of religiousbelief" is to "lose the experience, or to attend to something else altogether....If someone isafraid of a bear, his fear cannot be accurately described without mentioning the bear. Thisremains true regardless of whether or not the bear exists outside his mind. He maymistakenly perceive a fallen tree trunk on the trail ahead of him as a bear, but his fear isproperly described as fear of a bear."

Religion is not primarily a means by which we assuage fear, nor is it a tool by which webuild and repair societal structures, nor is it a meaning-producing system. None of thesethings are excluded from religion, nor are any of these things exclusive to religion. Beliefin the reality of gods or spirits--anthropomorphism--is at the center of religiousexperience and belief. This belief must be explained. Why has it been important forpeople in so many cultures over the ages to establish relationships with humanlike beingsknown as gods?It is here where science and religion differ most strongly. Science seeks to eliminateanthropomorphism; religion is built on it. Healthy skepticism, normally a virtue, isconsidered a vice in religious matters. If you doubt, if you are skeptical, you are breakingyour relationship with your god--a very dangerous thing to do.

Why do people take this relationship so seriously? Why the demonstrable spontaneity andtenacity of such beliefs? Guthrie believes that this results from an innate tendency withinthe human brain to seek pattern wherever it may be found, and to postulate the highestlevel of complexity in that pattern as possible. Humans assume, unless they find evidenceto the contrary, "that the nonhuman world creates and transmits meaning as people do: bysending and receiving symbolic communications." Religion assumes that the worldembodies intelligence, and so, humans must treat with it as they treat with one another.

Whenever perception is vague, interpretation is rendered difficult. Psychologists have

developed two famous drawings to illustrate this point. One is the head of an animal withtwo long objects extending upward from the top. Are these the ears of a rabbit or are theythe parts of a duck's bill? The other drawing at first may appear to be that of an old crone,but as one studies it, one discovers that the lines which make up the head may beinterpreted in a different way, allowing the viewer to see a young woman.

Such perceptual difficulties occur often in the world. The world arrives at our eyes as, inJames' words, a booming, buzzing confusion. We guess at what we are seeing, ourguesses based on the model of the world our brains have constructed through previousguesses and outcomes over time--an endless cycle of trial and error. When our brainsabstract and catalogue shapes of objects, we are then able to see and recognize themunder widely varying conditions. "What we see depends on what model we use."

As we scan for patterns, we also scan for importance. Nested hierarchies of scale, of setsand subsets, of duration, of interior and exterior, and of simplicity and great complexitycapture our interest. We concentrate on finding the scale and complexity of order we mostneed--that of other human beings. When we guess at the presence of certain hierarchicallevels of interest, we tend to guess high.

Our brains are engaged in updating thousands of interpretations of perceptions while ourconscious selves perceive a smoothly integrated reality. We ride serenely (most of thetime) above a boiling maelstrom of proffered realities.

Metaphor is a conscious suppression of difference to make an artistic point. Identity is a

psychological activity which enables us to do the same thing unconsciously. We ignoredifferences in the movement of the streaming river between yesterday and today, andclaim that it remains the same river. This is identity at work. Identity sometimes gives ourmental constructs more firmness than reality may actually possess. And when we engagein animistic or anthropomorphic thought, identity moves us up another step in perception.We see what is not alive as alive, what is not thinking as thinking. We are on our way toreligious thought and belief.It is extremely important to us not to miss significant information. If we think the shapeahead on the trail is a tree stump, but it turns out to be a bear, we will pay dearly for ourmistake in interpretation. But, if we err the other way, we merely look skittish andembarrass ourselves in front of our fellow hikers. Those humans who characteristicallyerred on the high side of perceptual hierarchies were selected by evolutionary pressuresover those who erred on the low side. In short, they lived to hike another day.

Since we all inherited this propensity to err on the high side of perception from oursuccessful ancestors, we all possess some natural propensity toward religious belief.Guthrie reminds us that "...belief in gods organizes experience as significantly as possibleby positing for nonhuman things and events the highest actual organization we know: thatof human beings and their society. Because humans are highly organized, they arecapable of generating a wide array of phenomena. Thus, much is explicable by appeal tohumans or something modeled on them. As theoretical entities, gods are reducers ofcomplexity and diversity because the entities on which they are modeled, real humans,are generators of complexity and diversity. Gods appear as powerful components oftheory because they are modeled on powerful real organisms."

The fact that most of the world's processes and features arise out of vast impersonalforces of self-organizing power instead of acts of intentionality does not occur to usnaturally. It has taken centuries of careful experimentation and hard theoretical work tolearn the truth. But when we do submit our hypotheses to the stern discipline of modernnatural science, we feel alienated from our normal thought processes. Our impulsesbetray us. This is when we discover how fundamental "man, the measure of all things"really is to our world view and how anthropomorphic that world view really is.

Removing anthropomorphism from human thought is very likely impossible, at least forthe foreseeable future. We wouldn't even want to try. Such a removal may haveundesirable side effects, not the least of which would be the loss of creativity,imagination, and the ability to spot bears on the trail. Anthropomorphism has provenitself to be so profoundly linked with our survival as a species that it may in fact be anineluctable part of being human. And so, the best we may hope for when we perceive andcreate patterns in the clouds is to develop the ability to look behind our perceptions, tofind the face, to acknowledge its beauty, and to concede that it isn't there.